It's going to take more than one post to describe just how bad David Segal's profile of fake psychic Uri Geller is, lousy with pseudo-profundity and cheap zeitgeisty asides, leaving out essential context that completely changes the story, with a central thesis that simply isn't true. We'll get to those gems later. For now, we'll start with one we've covered before, the claim that Randi and the other debunkers actually made Geller a star.
It’s a fortune he might have never earned, he said, without a group of highly agitated critics. Mr. Geller was long shadowed by a handful of professional magicians appalled that someone was fobbing off what they said were expertly finessed magic tricks as acts of telekinesis. Like well-matched heavyweights, they pummeled one another in the ’70s and ’80s in televised contests that elevated them all.
Geller has been pushing this line for years (see below). It's not difficult to see why he favors this version; it preserves his dignity and even paints him as a winner, but there's no reason to accept it and considerable reason not to. Before Randi starting exposing his tricks, Geller was being taken very seriously.
From the foreword to the Magic of Uri Geller:
Leon Jaroff, 1975
Thanks largely to James Randi, Geller would never again be studied seriously or courted by the military and other big players. Instead, by the late 70s, he would start the long slide toward post-celebrity celebrity. Despite the story he would tell later, he clearly saw his leading debunker as a threat and launched a barrage of harassment suits that would end up costing Randi nothing in damages but hundreds of thousands in legal fees.
Friday, October 23, 2020
The standard narrative on the Uri Geller/Amazing Randi conflict comes from the New York Times, which apparently got it from Uri Geller
RIP Randall James Hamilton Zwinge
James Randi, a magician who later challenged spoon benders, mind readers and faith healers with such voracity that he became regarded as the country’s foremost skeptic, has died, his foundation announced. He was 92.
The James Randi Educational Foundation confirmed his death, saying that its founder succumbed to “age-related causes” on Tuesday....
On a 1972 episode of “The Tonight Show,” he helped Johnny Carson set up Uri Geller, the Israeli performer who claimed to bend spoons with his mind. Randi ensured the spoons and other props were kept from Geller’s hands until showtime to prevent any tampering.
The result was an agonizing 22 minutes in which Geller was unable to perform his tricks.
For Randi, those 22 minutes of magic tricks not
being done would ironically become the high point of the magician's
biography but there was one more twist in the story
Adam Higginbotham writing for the New York Times Magazine in 2014.
“I sat there for 22 minutes, humiliated,” Geller told me, when I spoke to him in September. “I went back to my hotel, devastated. I was about to pack up the next day and go back to Tel Aviv. I thought, That’s it — I’m destroyed.” But to Geller’s astonishment, he was immediately booked on “The Merv Griffin Show.” He was on his way to becoming a paranormal superstar. “That Johnny Carson show made Uri Geller,” Geller said. To an enthusiastically trusting public, his failure only made his gifts seem more real: If he were performing magic tricks, they would surely work every time.
It's a great tale except that there's little reason to believe it actually happened that way. Start with the fact that Geller seems to be the main source, which should have raised some red flags for Higginbotham.
How about the appearance on the Merv Griffin Show? Wasn't he invited shortly after the Carson debacle? Not exactly. He was invited back.
From IMDB:
The Merv Griffin Show (1962–1986)
Alfred Drake, Pamela Mason, Uri Geller, Captain Edgar Mitchell
TV-PG | 1h | Comedy, Family, Music | Episode aired 19 July 1973
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992)
Ricardo Montalban/Eskimo-Indian Olympians/Uri Geller
1h 45min | Comedy, Talk-Show | Episode aired 1 August 1973
The Merv Griffin Show (1962–1986)
Eartha Kitt, Richard Dawson, Michelle Phillips, Uri Geller
TV-PG | 1h | Comedy, Family, Music | Episode aired 15 August 1973
[Late Edit: He'd also made appearances on Jack Parr's show before doing the Tonight Show -- MP]
Geller's telling makes it sound like it was the Carson appearance that got him on Griffin, but he was a returning guest and there's no reason to believe he wasn't invited back simply because he had done well a couple of weeks earlier.
Nor is there evidence that Geller's career took off in late 1973.
If anything, it looks like Randi's debunking of Geller starting with the Tonight Show and culminating with 1975's The Magic of Uri Geller was what brought the charlatan down.
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